molecular models

It's been interesting to watch as microbiology's own cold fusion debate has been raging. It began with an extraordinary claim about bacteria using arsenate as a replacement when phosphate concentrations are low (1).
It progressed when at least two scientist / bloggers ( here, and here) (not bloggers! the horrror! how uncivil!) gave public "journal club" presentations on blogs (envision dripping slime).
It continued with the science journalists lamenting about having swallowed the hype.
And it seemingly ended with another scientist / blogger's post that seemed to equate discussions of …

Some people, like Imelda Marcos and our new Dr. Isis, have a thing for fancy shoes.
I go crazy for gadgets.
technorati tags: iphone, DNA, molecules, molecular structure, molecular modeling, Science education
For my birthday this year, my family bought me a new iPhone! Yeah!
So, I've been killing several hours today filling it with cute little iPhone apps. Who knew one little phone could be so much fun?
One app, I enjoy, is called Molecules.
Molecules lets you download structure files from the Protein Data Bank (PDB) and play with the structures on your phone!
Spreading your fingers…

Last week I posted an image with two molecules (below the fold), one protein and one nucleic acid, and asked you about the probability of finding similar molecules in different species.
You gave me some interesting answers.
DAG made me clarify my question by asking what I meant by "similarity." I was wondering whether I would be likely to find a statistically relevant match by doing a BLAST search and I hadn't really thought about the cutoff values. I decided to guess and say that that the protein would be about 30% similar and the nucleic acid about 60%.
Paul gave me some answers…

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